Building Climate Resiliency Along Lake Ontario

By Hanna C. Quigley, Assistant Landscape Architect I, Barton & Loguidice

and Thomas M. Robinson Senior Managing Landscape Architect,Barton & Loguidice

The Great Lakes cover the largest surface of fresh water in the world, spanning 4,530 miles of coastline, with an overall watershed of over 200,000 square miles. The Lakes comprise 21% of the global supply of surface fresh water, and 84% of North America's surface fresh water. In recent years, the region has been experiencing extreme precipitation events, changes in growing seasons, and heightening temperature, which have resulted in damage to coastal environments. This has impacted the people, ecosystems, and infrastructure of the Great Lakes region.

In response to these challenges, New York State developed the Resiliency & Economic Development Initiative (REDI) to provide funding to communities for coastal resilience and economic development.

Wayne County, located in central New York along Lake Ontario, was awarded grant funding through this program for multiple projects. Two of the projects selected are the Crescent Beach Barrier Bar Project and the Blind Sodus Bay Barrier Bar Project. Barton & Loguidice worked closely with Anchor QEA as the selected consultant team for these projects. The synergy between various practice areas enhanced our approach to solving two different coastal challenges along Lake Ontario: creating new nature-based systems to protect existing shoreline, and re-establishing pre-existing shoreline.

Crescent Beach

Crescent Beach is a 1.5 mile long barrier bar located in the Town of Huron and the Town of Sodus, New York on the southern shore of Lake Ontario. The barrier bar is home to approximately 80 seasonal and year-round residents and protects Sodus Bay from wind, wave, and ice forces on Lake Ontario. Sodus Bay provides bio-diverse aquatic habitats and is designated as a New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (NYSDEC) significant natural community. The primary objective of the Crescent Beach REDI Project is to design and construct a natural or nature-based shoreline stabilization system that protects Crescent Beach from Lake Ontario wave action and enhances the overall resiliency of the barrier beach. Design criteria include:

• Long Term Protection of Crescent Beach Shoreline from Wind, Waves, and Ice Forces

• Protection of Sodus Bay aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems

• Impacts to Private Property

• Use of Natural or Nature-Based

Features

• Cost Considerations

• Maintenance Considerations

Multiple alternatives were evaluated with these criteria, resulting in the selection of a barrier rock reef living shoreline system, which achieves the established objectives and design criteria. Incorporating public input, the design team developed a living shoreline system that distributed protection and ecosystem enhancements

throughout the project site, considered community benefits, and upheld the REDI Objectives. Public input was received through an ESRI Storymap, a Virtual Public Meeting, and ongoing correspondence with residents.

It is anticipated that these projects will provide the following benefits along the entirety of Crescent Beach and to the surrounding community:

• Conservation and enhancement of local ecosystems, including those unique to each site and Bay;

• Support for local tourism and the recreational economy;

• Improvements for both water-based and land-based recreational activities; and

• Visual and functional quality in the selection of materials and appearance.

Blind Sodus Bay

The Blind Sodus Bay REDI Project has a similar process and similar goals to the Crescent Beach REDI Project, but applied to a different context. Blind Sodus Bay Barrier Bar is located to the east of Crescent Beach along Lake Ontario, spanning a total distance of 0.6 miles. The project objective was the reestablishment of a historic publicly-owned shoreline which once separated and protected Blind Sodus Bay from Lake Ontario wind, wave, and ice forces. This includes restoring a once isolated ecosystem, providing more robust natural and naturebased features that are more species focused, re-establishing a pre-existing gravel/cobble beach and historical navigation channel, and enhancing the barrier bar that still exists. Coastal modeling has been used to evaluate the performance of the proposed shoreline, while additional modeling is being utilized for geomorphology. This deeper depth of analysis will predict the long-term longevity of the proposed design.

Information networking is critical for advancing climate adaption strategies. The B&L and Anchor QEA team presented these resiliency projects at the 2021 Great Lakes Climate Action Seminar, hosted by the NYU American Society of Landscape Architects, and will be presenting the projects at the 2021 National Coastal Conference in New Orleans, LA in September 2021.

Both the built and the natural environment of the Great Lakes display potential vulnerabilities to climate change. Climate change will tend to amplify existing risks that impact people, ecosystems, and infrastructure. Effective countermeasures will require deep collaboration between science, design, engineering, and community planning.

Communities along the Great Lakes have suffered significant damage from changes in climate and resulting water levels along the shoreline in the past decade.

The erosion of the shoreline and flooding from these high water conditions during winter seasons causes irreversible affects during the rest of the year